Cultures of Energy

Cymene and Dominic talk about flying chihuahuas and playground chamomile in this week's intro. Then (12:26), we welcome Cornell's Sarah Besky ( http://www.sarahbesky.com/index.html ) to the podcast to talk about her latest book Tasting Qualities: The Past and Future of Tea (U California Press, 2020). We start with how and why Sarah first became interested in tea. From there we move on to the relat...

Cymene and Dominic begin with a speculative analysis of malfunctional laptops. Then (11:32) we welcome the brilliant landscape architect Dilip da Cunha to the podcast to talk about his longstanding collaborative work with Anuradha Mathur on wetness, rivers, monsoons, estuaries and so much more ( https://www.mathurdacunha.com ). Dilip explains how it was the Mississippi landscape that first got the...

Dominic and Cymene share a close encounter with a phantom raccoon and offer two ideas for sure-to-succeed new TV shows. Then (12:17) we are thrilled to welcome Gail Simmons—star judge of Bravo's Emmy and James Beard-award winning show Top Chef as well as a food writer and culinary expert—to the show. We get started with how Gail's background in anthropology influenced her career. Speaking of cultu...

  Cymene and Dominic talk war, sunglasses and unexpected colors and then (10:27) we pivot to the main event, a discussion of intersectional ecologies featuring three brilliant minds: Bridget Guarasci ( https://www.fandm.edu/bridget-guarasci ), Amelia Moore ( https://web.uri.edu/maf/meet/amelia-moore-2/ ) and Sarah Vaughn ( https://anthropology.berkeley.edu/sarah-e-vaughn ). We start with their 202...

A potpourri of hot topix leads off this week's episode: ASMR, Super Twosday, Ukraine, Bitcoin, and the correct pronunciation of Lindsey Lohan's name. Then (17:36) we are so very thrilled to welcome Beth Povinelli back to the pod to discuss her latest book, The Inheritance (Duke UP 2021), a graphic memoir that plumbs the messy relationships among nationality, ethnicity, kinship, religion, and belon...

Cymene and Dominic discuss extraterrestrial lavatology, evil corporate accounting software, skyfarms and chinchillas on this week's intro. Then (14:15) we are so delighted to welcome David Farrier (U Edinburgh) to the podcast to discuss his justly acclaimed latest book,  Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils  (FSG, 2020). David talks about how the Anthropocene has distorted our sense of time and...

Cymene and Dominic talk about the vine that's taking over their house and then (12:30) we welcome the New School's magnificent Shannon Mattern to the podcast We discuss her new book A City is Not a Computer: Other Urban Intelligences (Princeton UP, 2021) which explores the limits of computational models for understanding knowledge in urban contexts. We begin with the deep history of urban intellig...

Aaaaand we're back! Cymene and Dominic start off with their usual nonsense, which culminates in a lively discussion of the missile silo now listed on the real estate site Zillow (we were wrong on some of the specs btw, it's in Abilene, Kansas and only $380,000, survivalist bargain hunters can find all the deets here: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2432-Fair-Rd-Abilene-KS-67410/113177058_zpid/?...

Wow, we made it to 200 episodes and 250k downloads this week. Thank you everyone for listening for the past nearly four years.  It also seems like a good milestone for a change of pace. Your tireless cohosts need to take an extended break from weekly podcasting in order to commit ourselves more fully to a couple of other creative opportunities that have emerged during our time away from Rice. But...

Your co-hosts talk clonal trees and dispense important advice about relationships, breakups, and having "the conversation" with your children on this week's podcast. Then (17:16) we talk to Brown University's Bathsheba Demuth ( http://www.brdemuth.com ) about her new book Floating Coast ( https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393635164 ) a beautifully conceived and written environmental history of the Be...

Dominic and Cymene discuss Swiss silence and whether soup can be a meal on this week's podcast. Then (13:53) we sit down with Christoph Rosol and Tom Turnbull, two of the organizers of the baroque and fascinating project of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt ( https://www.hkw.de/de/index.php ) and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science ( https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de ), Mississippi: An...

In this week's special guest episode, Leah Stokes (UC Santa Barbara) and Bina Venkataraman take over the Cultures of Energy podcast to discuss Bina's new book, The Optimist's Telescope: Thinking Ahead in a Reckless Age ( https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780735219472?aff=penguinrandom ). This interview is part of the Twitter discussion, #climatebookclub, which is an informal group that Leah runs to...

Cymene and Dominic wonder whether Brexit or Impeachment will make for better political theater in the months ahead. Then (14:22) we talk to three wonderful folks who are in the process of assembling the Routledge Handbook of Energy Democracy, an interdisciplinary gathering of contributions spanning scholarly and activist engagements. Our three guests are Danielle Endres ( https://www.danielleendre...

Cymene and Dominic tease a family revelation and describe a museum full of caricatures of East Germany (a regime that tbh itself kinda caricatured socialism). Then (17:03) we welcome back to the podcast the one and only Laura Watts ( https://sand14.com ), now at Edinburgh, who has a marvelous new book out with MIT Press, Energy at the End of the World: An Orkney Islands Saga . We start there and t...

Dominic and Cymene take a trip down MTV memory lane to the romantic 1990s on this week's podcast. Then (16:00) we welcome the brilliant Christine Folch from Duke U to the pod to talk about her brand new book, Hydropolitics: The Itaipú Dam, Sovereignty, and the Engineering of Modern South America (Princeton U Press, 2019 - https://press.princeton.edu/titles/30066.html ). We start with the dam itsel...

Your cohosts talk chihuahuas and squirrels on the verge on this week's podcast. Then (14:56) we are delighted to welcome Orrin Pilkey Jr., Professor Emeritus at Duke University, to the podcast. Orrin is one of the world's foremost experts on sea level rise and has just co-authored a new book with his son Keith Pilkey called Sea Level Rise: A Slow Tsunami on America's Shores  (Duke U Press, 2019; h...

Cymene and Dominic talk about Jakarta sinking and Greta rising in this week's intro. Then (14:32) we are thrilled to welcome Elizabeth DeLoughrey ( https://english.ucla.edu/people-faculty/elizabeth-deloughrey/ ) to the conversation! We start with her latest book, Allegories of the Anthropocene (Duke UP 2019), and its effort to provincialize Anthropocene concept by taking more seriously the history...

Dominic and Cymene compare denialist and evangelical hate mail on this week's podcast and then share a few reflections on Sunday's trip to the top of Ok mountain. Then (16:53) we welcome the marvelous Amanda Boetzkes ( https://amandaboetzkes.com ) to the conversation so we can talk about her terrific new book, Plastic Capitalism (MIT Press, 2019). What is "waste art," when did it take shape and wi...

Dominic and Cymene talk airbnb for flies, slime-mold residencies and close encounters with hypothermia to get things going. Then (11:36), hey, it's primary debate season and if you're like your co-hosts you probably find evaluating the sprawling field of Democratic candidates for the U.S. Presidency fairly bewildering. So in this week's pod we drill down into climate policy among the Democrats. Wh...

Addled by cleaning products and dustballs, Cymene and Dominic imagine what a multispecies Ph. D. program might look like on this week's podcast. Then (13:59) we welcome Queen of Feminist Petrocultural Studies ™  Sheena Wilson to the podcast! We start with how growing up in Alberta helped attune her to the need for feminist and decolonial energy transitions and then turn to her critical take on pet...

Dominic and Cymene talk about the Democratic debates on this week's podcast. Then (13:57) we are humbled and thrilled to have legendary journalist Andrew Revkin join the conversation. We chat with Andrew about the environment beat back in the 1980s and how he became one of the first American journalists to take on the topic of climate change. We talk about the struggle for both reality and nuance...

Cymene and Dominic talk about Ok glacier's 15 minutes of fame on this week's podcast (e.g. https://slate.com/technology/2019/07/okjokull-iceland-glacier-death-plaque.html), ridiculous hate mail, and what it feels like being in the middle of the news maelstrom. And the first ever Cultures of Energy Everyday Climate Warrior ™  award is bestowed upon Daisy Hernandez from Popular Mechanics. Then (15:5...

Cymene talks about her exciting new life as a contractor on this week's podcast. Then (10:14) we welcome the brilliant theorist, artist and curator, Joanna Zylinska ( http://www.joannazylinska.net ) to the podcast to discuss her excellent new book, The End of Man: A Feminist Counterapocalypse (U Minnesota Press, 2018). We start with the central argument of the book that there is an intimate relati...

Co-host Cymene reminisces this week about being the first intern hired by Wired  magazine waaaay back in the day. Then (14:42) we are joined by journalist Andrew Blum ( https://www.andrewblum.net )—the celebrated author of Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet —to talk about his new book,  The Weather Machine (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2019). We dive deep into it, beginning with our "golden age...

Dominic and Cymene celebrate the one thing the USA ever did right—Mr. Rogers. And we wonder whether there is such a thing as Canadian BBQ.  Then (13:02) the delightful Natalie Loveless ( http://loveless.ca/about ) joins the pod. She is the author of a forthcoming book with Duke University Press, How to Make Art at the End of the World: A Manifesto for Research-Creation , and that's where we begin...